In Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Bissau Creole (in fact the dialect of the city of Bissau) serves as a first language in the actual city of Bissau (capital) and in most cities in the country, and serves as a trade language in the rest of Guinea-Bissau.

Guinea-Bissau Creole is also spoken by groups established in Senegal (district of Tilène in Ziguinchor, town of Goudomp, Sédhiou area, Kolda Region).

Number of speakers:

At least 500,000 as a first language, and over a million considering speakers who use Guinea-Bissau Creole daily as a trade language.

Language status:

Guinea-Bissau Creole has a dominant status in the oral sphere of Guinea-Bissau, although Portuguese does remain the country’s main language in education and administration (in spite of a few experiments in bilingual literacy teaching – Guinea-Bissau Creole/Portuguese – especially in certain Catholic private schools).

Vitality & Transmission:

Guinea-Bissau Creole is expanding significantly, and is about to replace local African languages for the children and youngsters of numerous parts of the country, including rural areas. Immigration from Guinea-Bissau maintains Guinea-Bissau Creole spoken in Senegal.

Media/Literature/Education:

The language is used on the radio and television, concurrently with Portuguese.

Historical, ethnographic, and sociolinguistic observations

Varieties of Guinea-Bissau Creole were probably spoken as mother tongues back in the 17th century in the Portuguese trading posts of Cacheu, Geba, Bissau, and Joal, on the Serer coast (where the local Creole disappeared in the 19th century), and perhaps even in Gorée, Rufisque, and Saint-Louis.

The debate raging among creolists regarding the origins of Creole in the Guinea-Bissau and Senegal areas aims to determine whether these idioms actually developed there, or if they originated from Cape Verdean (imported onto the continent by the Cape Verdean merchants who came along with the Portuguese).

Modern Guinea-Bissau Creole shares one and the same Afro-Portuguese background with the other Afro-Portuguese Creoles of West Africa, but has also been affected by the influence of Guinea-Bissau adstrats (Balanta, Mankanya, Mandinka, Manjack, Papel, etc.)

Linguistic observations

Guinea-Bissau Creole is an analytical type-SVO language. It shows analytical causative verbal extension (in –VntV), which, among the other Afro-Portuguese Creoles of West Africa, is only observed in Casamance Creole.

Sorosoro is a program carried by the WOLACO Association (World Languages ​​Conservancy) and supported by the Laboratory of Excellence ASLAN (Advanced Studies on language complexity) from the University of Lyon.